


The One Where Karkat And Rose Both Fuck Up But It Works Out Somehow

by AiviloQuillMaster, Missyomite



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Altered State of Conciouness, Based on a fic, Couch Cuddles, Disscussions of free will, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Illustrated, Pale Porn, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Papping, Undaverse, We love you Unda, We would use Quadrant symbols but we are dumb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 09:49:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28704705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AiviloQuillMaster/pseuds/AiviloQuillMaster, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missyomite/pseuds/Missyomite
Summary: Based on Alternate Universe by UndaKarkat has a present for Rose, he feels like he fucked up. Rose tries to comfort him, she also feels like she fucked up.Neither of them fucked up and everything was fine all along. Cue the Fluff!
Relationships: (background) davesolkat, Rose Lalonde & Karkat Vantas
Comments: 7
Kudos: 36





	The One Where Karkat And Rose Both Fuck Up But It Works Out Somehow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Unda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unda/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Restricted Work] by [Unda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unda/pseuds/Unda). Log in to view. 
  * Inspired by [Restricted Work] by [Unda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unda/pseuds/Unda). Log in to view. 



It was a late Thursday evening, and you were a very tired college student, who is also a God of Knowledge. When someone wonders what to do after suing the devil for failing to pay for child support and freeing the world from certain destruction, going back to school seems mundane and anticlimactic. Which is, in fact, the point. After all of that both you and Dave felt the need to reclaim a sense of normalcy after being thrust into godhood, again.

Besides, you still have to build up a following before god powers mean anything more impressive than flying and freaking people out with things they wish no one knew.

Knowledge is power after all.

On this particular evening, your weariness stemmed from a day of classes, ethical questions on the logistics of god powered cheating, and the general monotony of being an “average” college student. So you have been sitting on your couch stress knitting when your roommate/angel/moirail/best friend walks in. You instantly feel something is up. One part intuitive god powers and the other part Karkat’s inability to “play it cool”.

Looking at him, you don’t need god powers to see the slight tension in his shoulders and his unnaturally stiff facial expression as he pretends to be less nervous than he is. You adore him, but he can be such a dork sometimes.

“Hello Karkat.” You greet, feigning ignorance.

“Uh, Hi Rose. How was your day?” Karkat said, conspicuously hiding something behind his back. His bag of holding was slung over his shoulder, and he was wearing his belt of holding. If he really wanted to hide whatever he had behind his back, you’re sure he could’ve added it into either of his bags or his personal angelic void, or perhaps the fact he had three ways of storage on his body never occurred to him.

“Long, tiring, occasionally dumb. So, your average Thursday I suppose. I assume not so for you?”

He laughs nervously, “My day was actually about the same, long, boring, etcetera. Nothing exciting here.” He starts sliding along the wall, keeping his back to you instead of walking across the room like a normal person. Although, in fairness, the most normal person in your shared social circle is a literal dragon lawyer.

“Well I'm going to my room, talk to you later.” He tries to rush the rest of the distance, but doesn’t even make it two steps before managing to trip over himself and fall face first on the floor shouting “FUCK!”

You wince at the Angelic volume increase. But then you look over to him and see him just, laying there, groaning more in the tone of an exasperated man than one in any real pain.

“You okay there Karkat?” You ask, just barely containing your laughter at his bout of comical misfortune. You are concerned about him, but sometimes it’s just too easy to tease him. You don’t _feel_ like he’s in pain, so any wounds must be to his ego over his body.

“I’m fine.” He groans, not even lifting his head off the floor. “I think maybe I'm just going to stay down here, it’s where I belong now.” He shifts a little, but otherwise stays on the wooden floor of their dorm. Have either of you vacuumed recently? Regardless, that can’t be comfortable, or clean.

“No you aren’t.” You tut.

You place your knitting aside and get up, intending to help him off the ground and then ask him if something’s bothering him. But as you round the couch you notice something on the floor, perhaps it had flown out of the empty bag besides Karkat when he tripped.

“Hm, what's this?”

“What's what?” He lifts his head, and the moment he sees you he bolts upright in an undignified flail of limbs, including his stained glass wings. His eyes locked on the formerly hidden item before groaning once more and covering his face with both hands in a wholly exasperated movement. “The cat's out of the fucking bag now I guess, the cat being this pillow.”

“Creatures of feline persuasion tend to not stay in bags for long in my experience.” You pick up the pillow from the ground and turn it over “But why would this pil-” You stop mid sentence as you examined what the pillow depicted.

The pillow was purple velvet with yellow tassels on each corner, but what really drew your eyes was the embroidery. On one side was what had come to be your divine symbol, a stylised sun with a dark eye inside. The sunrays replaced with writhing black tentacles with deep purple beads for suckers. Inside the eye was the phrase “Foresight is 2020” in grey thread and notably less grace than most the rest of the stitchwork. Actually, looking closer you can see places where similarly unrefined stitches were hidden by fresh thread.

This pillow is the most wonderful and thoughtful gift you have ever received.

“It was supposed to be a surprise, I had plans to give it to you after I made us a nice dinner. But of course I fucked up in the most spectacular and humorously absurd way possible. What the fuck did I even trip on? Neither of us leave things on the floor. Anyway, the fucking punch line is that this wasn’t even my biggest fuck up, I had to get help to make it. I couldn’t even finish one gift for my moirail without fucking it up. I was working on it during my break at the library when Kanaya came over and saw it. Pretty sure she almost had an aneurysm from how bad it looked. She immediately offered her help and I said yes to it because I knew it was so fucking awful.” Karkat rambled, standing up and pacing across the floor by the climax of his self deprecating rant. You watch him beat himself up over something you never expected. You don’t think, you just close the distance between you two and cup his cheek.

He stops for a second before continuing his spiel, softer this time. “I don’t deserve any credit for this present, I didn’t do most of it. All I did was sit and twiddle my thumbs while Kanaya did all of the work.”

“I love it.” You do, he thought of something that would speak to you and tried his best, you know. Kanaya’s involvement notwithstanding. You do tuck that little tidbit away for later though.

There is still apprehension in his face, like he doesn’t quite believe what you said could be true. Sad to say he has a hard time accepting the plain and simple fact that he’s wonderful and anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong.

You stroke his face, then try something you haven’t done since the last time you were this old. Instilling the desire to soothe his worries into your palm, and gently press it beneath his eye. There's a golden glow beneath your touch and the remaining tension in his expression melts away. He presses into your hand, eyes closed with a soft sigh.

You do it once more, this time also trying to get across the unambiguous certainty that you don’t think less of him for having had help. Also in part because a relaxed Karkat is a happy Karkat. And as his moirail and his god you would be quite remiss not to encourage this. His halo materializes, shining brightly in gold and red shards. Then you suddenly feel Karkat slump against you.

“Um, Karkat?” You give him a little nudge on his cheek with your hand to try and bring him back to his usual state of consciousness. It did not work, in fact more of his body weight leans against you. You try again, this time with a little more force, not quite slapping him. Karkat is now slowly gravitating towards the floor, his legs giving out underneath him. Quickly, you grab him from under his arms and you try to drag him to the couch. After a few moments of struggle he’s fully laid out, wings splayed out over the back of the couch and the floor. And his head resting on the pillow.

Worry starts to creep up your spine, surely this isn’t a normal response to a gentle caress on the cheek.

“Karkat. Karkat, please wake up.” His eyes under his eyelids move a bit but they do not open. Worry has now firmly grasped you, you shake his shoulders some and then you move your hands back to his face. A firm hand to the face should work this time, right? Somehow Karkat relaxes into the couch even further and he nudges his face into the hand you touched him with.

You start to panic. You have no idea what’s happening or how to fix it either. You scramble for your phone and call the first person you could think of.

Two rings later he answers, because of course he did. “Hey Rose, What’s up?”

“I think I broke Karkat.” You refuse to categorise that sentence as a whine, regardless of how freaked out and panicked you know you sound.

“What? How do you mean?” he asks.

“I don’t know! He just collapsed on me and I don’t know what happened.”

“Shit, hang tight I’ll be right over, your dorm right?”

“Yes.” You don’t wait for long before you smell the distinct scent of synthetic apple beside you. And there was Sollux, who takes one look at Karkat before all four eyes widen and he vanishes before the first cloud of bicolored smoke had time to dissipate.

You can hear him over the receiver still, giving a loud and disgusted groan.

“I did not need to see that Rose.” He tells you once he finishes making a strangled gag. “While I really, really don’t want to know, tell me what you did before you called me.”

“Uh, he gave me something really sweet and I papped his cheek then he collapsed on me and it kept getting worse and I don't know what happened." You explain in a panicked rush, although you also feel yourself inexplicably blushing as well.

Sollux gives a long, agitated sigh, “Well your first mistake was touching his cheek, especially since he’s so pale repressed if you so much as breathed on his face he could go comatose. Think about it Rose, when was the last time he had any full on pale attention that wasn’t toxic as shit? God I feel so gross talking about Karkat in this context. You were papping him, right? That's very specifically pale and- just... just stop papping him, he'll come out of it eventually. Never make me talk about this again. This conversation never happened."

You just barely catch another disgusted sound before he hangs up.

Okay, so he should be fine. Sollux didn’t really elaborate on what’s happening, just that he’ll be fine. Thinking about it you are mortified to realise that from his perspective this may have been the equivalent of walking in on him or Dave with Karkat in the context of being in a romantic relationship.

You sit on the arm of the sofa, just above his head and wait. Looking at him again, you see the ways his form almost looks boneless as he lays there. Totally devoid of tension. You can even see places where the rings inside him are exposed like creases in a dress.

He has the biggest smile on his face, ear to ear in an almost unnatural level of bliss.

You have a feeling this shouldn’t be so anxiety inducing on your end, he looks more relaxed than you can recall him ever being. But, you have this nagging feeling of guilt about it too. Would he have been okay with this if he wasn’t already in this state? You, you really are worried that you may have crossed some kind of line here.

The thought gnaws at you as you wring your hands together. You gained a lot of power over him since you became his god, if you wanted to you could make him do anything. You could force him to accept your feelings and act in the way you want him to. He’s your angel, you could do that.

And it sickens you to even contemplate.

That’s how his maker treated him, forcing him to do things he didn’t want to. Making him feel like his empathy and decency would get his choices taken away. Karkat went behind his back so many times to do the right thing, and everytime risking punishment for it. You know he can’t stand sensory deprivation, reminding him too much of being trapped in “an endless fucking void.”

You remember seeing what a command did to him, making him so single mindedly desperate to comply he nearly got hit by a car. You remember being so horrified and worried. You remember how they cast him out, failing to see what a precious treasure they had in him. How they threw him out like he was nothing.

You _never_ want to be anything like that.

The need to have something in your hands to focus your mind comes to you. Looking around for your knitting you spot it on the couch, under where Karkat is currently sprawled out on. Great.

That avenue closed off for now, you instead resolve to make some tea instead. Your hands actually shake slightly as you fill the kettle with water. Yeah, you need to discuss this with Karkat when he comes down. You debate between a lavender-chamomile mix or a rooibos vanilla blend for a while before just making one of each and hoping it doesn’t go cold by the time Karkat gets to it.

You head back to the couch and almost jump when Karkat actually turns his head towards you when you get there.

“Karkat! Can you hear me?” you all but gasp, putting both mugs aside before kneeling in front of him.

“Uh-huh.” Karkat slurs, sounding drowsy and almost drunk. His eyes open like he just woke up, a dopey smile still on his face.

You feel your heart positively melt.

“Welcome back to the waking, we, uh, need to talk about a few things. But I’ll wait for you to get your bearings again.” Perhaps your phrasing wasn’t the best because Karkat’s whole demeanor went from relaxed and calm to tense and confused in under a second.

“Consider my bearings got.” He moves slowly to more of a sitting position with his back to the armrest of the right side of the couch. You sit on the opposite side, crossing your legs so you’re facing each other.

His wings now tensed up behind him, you resist the urge to smooth them down.

You wring your hands together instead. "I, ah, feel like I need to apologize for all this."

Karkat shifts a bit, looking uncomfortable. "What for? I'm the one who gave you a gift I couldn't even finish myself and blacked out on you."

"What? No. I loved the pillow, that's not what I'm talking about. I mean, about," You look down, staring at your clenched hands instead of his face. He scoots closer to you and covers your hands with his. He feels warm.

You finally manage to whisper, "I promised myself I'd never do anything to take your free will away. But then I went and did it didn't I? I wanted you to relax and accept my gratitude. So I went and forced it on you and-" You feel like you stopped bothering to breathe at some point, and the more you try to put it into words you start to feel, a little dumb? Maybe you’re blowing the situation a little out of proportion, berhaps.

"Hey hey hey no you didn't do anything wrong." He pulls you into a hug so your face is in his chest and he can rest his chin on your head. "Rose I trust you, I trust that you wouldn’t force me to do anything I wasn’t okay with. Honestly that felt really, really good. I know you’d never want to hurt me. You are nothing like Kankri and everyone of those asshole angels like him who seem to think that free will is an inconvenience to their “Great Plan” that I am convinced never even existed.”

You wrap your own arms around him, rubbing soothing circles on his back, mostly for you if you were wholly honest." I should have asked first, I shouldn't have tried without asking first. I'm sorry."

"I forgive you." He starts to rub small circles on your back now, soothing you as well in turn, "Uh, I'm still not entirely sure what happened, the last few minutes were a hazy blur of-" He waves one hand around vaguely. "-bliss?"

You calm down, sensing the little surge of his faith. Despite all the emotions you were just throwing around a minute ago you chuckle. "You looked like a haze of bliss. If I didn't know your body doesn't technically have bones I would have thought I managed to turn them to putty."

"Yeah, that's a good descriptor of what it felt like. I think that was the most relaxed I've been in, forever?" He leans back and you flop down with him, then he wraps the free parts of his wings around you both. "I'm going to assume based on context that you did a lot of papping and my brain just sorta, turned off for a while. Also remind me never to tell you how I learned about papping in this timeline."

You obviously laugh at that absurd notion, “Well you can't just say that and expect me to leave it be." You get to see a close up of the regret flash across his face when he realises he screwed himself over with that.

You feel, better. Like the difference between the raging sea and the tranquility of still water. A kind of contentment beginning to settle in despite everything. "You, really didn't mind? At all?"

He smiles at you, "I really don't mind, though next time maybe a little warning? I don't think either of us need a repeat of what just happened."

You grin "Agreed. I don’t want to go through this every time you feel like buying me a coffee." Your head rested on his chest, feeling his breathing and hearing the ever so faint sound of a glassy heartbeat.

The two of you stay like that for the rest of the night. And the next morning you wake up to Karkat stabbing himself on your needles.

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate Fic Names; Pale Pillow Present, Shameless Pale Porn, These Dumbass Moirails, Faceplant Central, Hold Me Tight or Don’t (obligatory song name title)  
> Ideas that didn’t make it: The pillow being a b-day present for Rose, Rose having a present for karkat as well, Karkat slipping that Kanaya was working on a present for Rose as well, Rose realizing herself what was happening so she didn’t to phone a friend, several funnie jokes I, Jason, made in the google doc, Including a hetero Joke because Rose is secure in her sexuality, Rose going “Oh my Me” in her head because god, also karkat.exe has stopped working
> 
> [Pillow Present Drawing by Jason/Missyomite](https://songsnstars.tumblr.com/post/640072454287605760/will-be-adding-link-to-the-fic-tomorrow-3c)


End file.
